Ukrainian drone strike on Russian munitions depot causes seismic explosion

Residents of Toropets in Russia’s western Tver region were evacuated after a “massive” overnight Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire, Tver region Governor Igor Rudenya said on the regional government’s Telegram channel in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Rudenya first reported at around 3:30am local time that “drone debris falling during air defence operations” had caused the fire in the town, before announcing its “partial evacuation” while “air defence operations are ongoing and the fire is being localised” around half an hour later.

While Rudenya did not specify where the fire had broken out, footage circulated on Telegram appeared to show clouds of smoke rising from a local munitions depot as explosions reportedly continued through Wednesday morning.

Russian independent news outlet Agentstvo said NASA satellite images captured on Wednesday morning showed a 5-square-kilometre fire at an arsenal of Russia’s Main Missile and Artillery Directorate on the outskirts of Toropets.

Seismic monitoring service Volcanodiscovery registered a 2.8 magnitude earthquake near Toropets at 3:56am local time, apparently caused by an explosion at the depot, followed by several smaller tremors. Footage shared by Telegram channel ASTRA appeared to show windows in buildings across Toropets blown out as a result of the blast.

Toropets residents were being evacuated to the town of Zapadnaya Dvina around 35 kilometres away, Russian state news agency TASS reported, with Zapadnodvinsky district authorities saying that schools would hold lessons online on Wednesday.

Authorities in the region’s Toropetsky district, where Toropets is located, stressed that the situation was “under control” but urged residents not to post footage of the drone crash site “in the interests of public safety”.

While Russia’s Defence Ministry reported in its daily update on Wednesday morning that 54 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted overnight, it made no mention of the Tver region, saying only that 27 drones had been shot down over the western Kursk region, 16 over the neighbouring Bryansk region, and various others over the Smolensk, Belgorod and Oryol regions.